Expert: Enrique Torres - 8/28/2009

Question
What is the name of the fat that is wrapped around meat to add moisture?

Answer
Brad:
In some cooking recipes are ingredients used on meat before cooking: olive oil, pork fat, sesame oil and some net of fat that wraps veal's intestines and is used to wrap meats before cooking to give "wet" sensation, if possible you can buy in veal's slaughtering houses.

There are many concepts around "moisture" and "meat" that have to be explained:

a. Moisture is different from fat,but fat gives some wet sensation when meat is chew.
b. All meats lose moisture when cooked (20% to 35%), that causes shrinkage, hardness and dryness. Then, the most important is to control moisture (water) content inside meats during cooking.
c. The moisture retention depends on more than 56 processing factors. As you can see it requires a lot of technical developments.

Good luck,
Enrique